This one day conference will be held at the Impact Convention Center, Banmai Sub district, Bangkok on Tuesday, 29th January.

The Humanitarian Logistics Association (HLA) is pleased to invite you to participate in the first General Assembly for the Asia Pacific Region. Please join us and take the opportunity to meet with your peers, discuss best practices and explore opportunities for collaboration and the professionalization of the humanitarian logistics sector.

Senior programme managers and senior logisticians from the aid sector, who wish to contribute to improving the effectiveness of humanitarian response

Donors with an interest in obtaining better value for their money

Academics teaching or carrying out research in the logistics field, who can contribute to improved methodologies

Individual humanitarian logistics practitioners who can share their experience.

Accommodation can be arranged via the booking form here at the Novotel Hotel, which is near the convention centre.

Further Information:In partnership with, and sponsored by the RMA Group and AIDF, the HLA is holding its first General Assembly for the Asia Pacific region, on 29 January 2013 in Bangkok. Leading figures from the humanitarian logistics sector will discuss opportunities for collaboration and knowledge sharing, as well as the importance of logistics capacity building initiatives as a means to improve response to major disasters that occur frequently in the region. The HLA is at the forefront of discussions to professionalise the humanitarian logistics sector as it plays such a critical role in the delivery of aid. Delegates will also review challenges and opportunities to augment performance and efficiency via links to the private sector, therefore linkage to AIDF’s inaugural event is extremely complementary. Such initiatives will help start new innovations and grow the community of humanitarian logisticians working in the Asia Pacific region.

Each emergency is different; the best long term improvements will come from investing in the training, education and development of the logisticians who deliver aid at short notice and minimum cost. This will also improve the quality of aid programmes. The HLA helps the humanitarian logistics community of practice through professional development and harmonisation, conferences, research and knowledge management.

At the HLA’s Humanitarian Logistics Summit in March 2011, HRH The Princess Royal launched a programme of activities that are driving forward the Association. The HLA sees real benefit in using conferences and lectures hosted by others to build awareness and support and to establish linkages that foster discussions across the very diverse group of humanitarian logistics actors. It is a key objective to draw together the major stakeholders in the sector, and audit what agencies are doing, with a view to deriving agreed core competencies and identifying whether there is a need to carry out new work. The HLA has been working with academia to steer research into the incipient problems of the sector and is making progress in this regard. This year, support is needed to:

Work towards one career pathway and one set of harmonised competencies for the sector

Grow the footprint of the HLA and augment its ability to deliver further benefits to the sector

Identify current logistics problems on behalf of the community and seek sponsors for their solutions

Develop a knowledge sharing platform to better support the humanitarian logistics community of practice

The Trustees are hugely grateful to the volunteers and sponsors who have made the HLA’s work possible, including the CILT(UK) which provides invaluable administrative support.